Just Shoot Me

Lomographers shoot from the hip. Or out the car window. Or between their legs. They never say, “Say, ‘cheese.’ ”

That’s partly because they can barely see through the viewfinders of their funny little Russian-made Lomo cameras. And partly because of the marketing savvy of Austrians Matthias Fiegl and Wolfgang Stranzinger. They shrank the Lomo’s original title (Leningradskoje Optiko Mechanit-scheskoje Objedinienie) and trumpeted the easy “Lomo lifestyle.”

Young Europeans grooved on the way the palm-sized 35mm with an automatic light meter and no auto focus or flash turned nothing snaps into off-kilter slices of life in eye-popping colors. The Lomo lens lets you shoot without a moment’s thought, at moments when you might not be up to thinking.

You don’t just buy a Lomo; you can be an official Lomographer. Membership ($185) includes the camera, a few rolls of film and a little book illustrating the strangely familiar: somebody’s dog, a pair of slippers, hands on a guitar neck.

“We’ve gone through about 100 since a week ago,” says Steven Trussell, owner of Naked, the only West Coast outlet for the new toy. Who buys it? “Anyone who likes to use a camera as a paintbrush.”

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Naked, 181 N. Martel Ave., West Hollywood; (323) 964-0222.